“Members of Maine Youth Justice, a campaign to end youth incarceration, are calling on a state task force to recommend closing the Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland by next year. On Tuesday morning they rallied outside the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta, where the task force was scheduled to meet. But that option is currently not among those being proposed to reform Maine’s juvenile justice system.”

“I’m out here because I know that $18.2 million in my community could help my friends get housing, it could help my friends get community centers in their town,” said Al Cleveland, a campaign manager for Maine Youth Justice.

“If we live in a society where children aren’t being treated as children, then we’re not moving forward,” Tutu Oryem, of Maine Youth Justice, said

“Maine Youth Justice points out that the task of reforming broken carceral systems around the country falls in large part to state legislatures and governors’ offices, as the vast majority of incarcerated people are held in state prisons and local jails.”

“So I think this fight is not only for black people anymore,” Ali said. “I don’t think this fight is